Barriers to Individual and Collective Action on Climate Change (Elke Weber)

• 3 July 2024, 4:15 pm
• Lecture hall 3

Action to mitigate climate change falls dramatically short in needed scale and speed, from public and private sector investments in a clean energy infrastructure to voter and consumer willingness to embrace change. Policy analysis still largely assumes that rational choice processes drive energy transition decisions at all levels. My presentation will describe the ways in which the perceptions of and responses to the climate crisis by homo sapiens differ from those of homo economicus and, in combination with political constraints and social dynamics, result in the pervasive status-quo bias currently observed.  A more complete understanding of human goals and available decision processes however also point the way towards the design of interventions that restructure the decision environment in ways more favorable to physical and social change and climate action.

Elke Weber is a cognitive psychologist and behavioral decision theorist. Her research draws from psychology, economics, sociology, ecology, and evolutionary biology to examine and model the decisions of individuals and groups as they deal with uncertainty and trade-offs in complex threats like climate change. Over her career, Weber has contributed her expertise to numerous organizations in the US and beyond. She has served on various National Academy of Sciences advisory committees on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, as a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Science Advisory Board, and on a Committee on Carbon Neutrality to the German government. Weber has also been a lead author on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth and Sixth Assessment Reports. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of both the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In 2016, she received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for Risk Analysis and in 2023 the Patrick Suppes Prize from the American Philosophical Society.

Elke Weber holds the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and Associate Director for Education,Andlinger Institute and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs. She is a fellowof the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University.